Ever since some point this spring, I have been struggling in my relationship with Mama Bear. I have had 4, maybe 5 crises with her since this started, which is completely unusual for me. I need for things to feel stable and it always causes me significant distress when I experience a rupture with Mama Bear. So, this has been a very uncomfortable summer from me, and for awhile I felt bewildered and started to worry that something was really wrong. Now that things have calmed down again, I think that my problems with Mama Bear actually were signs that things were going mostly right, rather than signs that there was something terribly wrong.

One of the things that seems to have been going on is that I feel more comfortable with getting upset with her. Dare I say it? I have even been getting mad at her when I think that she mishandled something and I was hurt in the process. In the past, I would have made myself swallow my hurt and anger and proceed as if nothing had gone wrong. This summer, we stumbled our way through my going back and forth between aiming my anger at myself and expressing it to her in bits and pieces. Thankfully, she has the knack of remaining completely non-defensive and even being able to welcome my anger. She would point out that I was taking it out on myself again because that felt safer than being angry with her and then she would gently point out my angry body language, the anger in my voice, the anger in my look, and question me to bring out the anger in my thoughts.

I had crisis after crisis with her, but I also was engaging with her more intensely and intimately. I was “letting her in.” Six months previously, I couldn’t make eye contact for more than a second or two, but now there were times when I would seek out and sustain that contact, so that I did not feel alone with whatever I was struggling with. I felt as though I was sitting in the same room with her almost all of the time, bumping up against her. You are much more likely to feel in conflict with someone if they are right next to you than if they are in the next room.

At some point, Mama Bear pointed out to me that in my family, no one talked about conflict. What was happening with her was my chance to experience talking with her about whatever was upsetting me and working through it in a safe way. As she said, “In your family you used smoke signals at best, but here you get to use words with me. It’s a part of what we do; we talk through an issue and come up with a solution that works for both of us.” As I had to find the courage to talk with her about issues that I didn’t want to broach, I kept on thinking back to this idea. It’s my chance to learn how to work through conflict using words and she will welcome what I bring up.

However, perhaps the most important factor was that I had started to share with Mama Bear some of the ways in which I believe that my dad abused me and memories of some of the worst of the abuse by my grandfather. Deep down inside, I expected that there wouldn’t be anyone in the world who would actually deeply believe me. I believed that anyone that I told would respond in one of two ways 1) they would be overwhelmed and turn away and abandon me or 2) they would say, “It is impossible that your grandfather did X to you. He didn’t torture you. Nothing that bad could have happened; you are exaggerating and you should be ashamed of yourself.”

After this latest crisis, Mama Bear had been talking to me and said something that drove everything else out of my head. She said that it made sense that I had dissociated so extensively and developed so many parts because the situations that I had to deal with as a child were so overwhelming and painful. She then said something about how I had experienced my of my grandfather’s abuse as torture.

I will admit that I stopped listening at that point. I was completely caught up in dealing with the implications of her statement. I had used the word “torture” a couple of times early in the summer, and while Mama Bear had agreed with my use of the word at the time, she had never before used it herself. I was stunned to hear it come out of her mouth so matter of factly. Maybe she really believed when I had told her what my experience was like with my grandfather? Maybe she actually understood just how horrific it was?

I went home and thought a good deal about it all. I thought some more about what I wrote about in “Is it safe to help myself?” Eventually I decided to take a huge chance and talk with Mama Bear about the issues in that post, because this was a dynamic that was keeping me stuck and unable to move forward.

When I talked with her in the next session, she clearly understood what I was saying and further realized how what she was doing in an attempt to help me was instead pushing me to entrench myself in a helpless position. If I hadn’t told her, in spite of my shame, who knows how long we would have remained trapped in the same pattern.

I went on to explain that what had enabled me to feel brave enough to tell her was what she had said in the previous session.

She glanced at her notes, “I don’t remember what I said. Do you remember?”

I sat there, struggling to get the words out.

She reassured me, “It’s OK if you don’t remember. It might just be the over all conversation.”

“Oh, no. I remember exactly what you said.”

That got her attention, because my memory often is so bad from session to session. “Really? What did I say?”

“You acknowledged that I experienced my grandfather’s abuse as torture and I realized that you really believed me. Someone really, really believes me.”

She looked at me gently, “Yes, I believe that you experienced your grandfather’s abuse as torture. I have heard you and I believe you.”

I stared into her eyes for awhile, taking in that she really meant what she was saying, and then I burst out with, “Thank you so much!” and I started to sob from the very center of my being. I curled up in a ball on the love seat and cried and cried. After a moment or two, Mama Bear got up and came over to kneel on the floor by me and hold my hand. Her gentle presence helped me to feel as though I was being held and that it was safe to let out all of the fear and despair that no one would ever believe me.

I looked up at her, “I can’t tell you what a huge relief it is to feel believed about this. I didn’t think that I would ever have anyone really believe me.”

“I am so glad that you can fully take in my support and caring and belief in you.”

I looked at her for while in a bit of a state of shock and then I laid my head down on our hands and just felt contained.

She said to me, “I feel like something awe inspiring has happened here and I am grateful that I was able to share it with you.”

I nodded my head and we sat there together for another moment or two.

This interaction seems to have changed everything between us, from my perspective. It feels safe to deeply trust her again. Deep inside I had previously feared that she would hurt me for telling her the worst that I had to share. I think that I believed that she wouldn’t be able to help herself because everyone had to eventually reject either me or my experience, once I had told/showed them just how bad it was. But she didn’t reject either me or what happened to me. Instead she came closer to me and she helped me to hold and take care of those parts that were so terribly traumatized by my grandfather.

I do hope that the crises of this summer are over, but this was a reminder that just because things feel awful and chaotic, it doesn’t always mean that I am really in trouble. Several times this summer, Mama Bear would take me by the shoulders and look me straight in the eye and say, “We are OK, C. We really are, even though it doesn’t feel like it. We will talk about what is going on and work through it, but things actually are more OK between the two of us than it feels like right now.” I wish that I had been able to believe her at the time, because it turns out that she was right.

I recently discovered that I have told Mama Bear far less about the abuse than I think that I have. I have talked around what happened and hinted at it, but not given her many details. In some ways, that is OK; we have talked about how I can heal without going into the details. Unfortunately, it can also cause some pretty significant problems, though.

A couple of weeks ago, Mama Bear and I had a significant disruption because of misunderstandings caused by my thinking that I had been more clear to her than I actually had. She does the good therapist thing (actually it’s healthy communication, period) and doesn’t make assumptions based on what I hint at, however, in my mind, I have told her that I remember X happening. What I have been doing is referring to a lot of fuzzy “memory-type things” (my phrase) with my father (and maybe hinting broadly at what happened) and my struggles with believing myself, and so in her mind the whole story was vague and anything but clear. In my mind, I had been telling her about the types of memories, if not the details, and while I am experiencing a lot of conflict and somethings a fuzzy, what is clear, is clear.

When she came back from her trip a few weeks ago, after receiving my e-mails about the memories that I was dealing with, she asked me what I actually remembered about the abuse with my dad. In her mind, she was just trying to get a clearer picture of what was clear to me, if anything, and she wasn’t asking about specific abuse memories. She has no doubt that I was badly abused; whether I remember specifics or not only matters in terms of how treatment needs to proceed. In my mind, she was questioning whether I actually remembered anything and was asking me to prove that I did. That was not a session that went at all well. I felt attacked, bewildered, betrayed, like I had lost the person I could talk about the abuse with, angry, and more. My trust in her was severely shaken. I did not believe that she had hurt me on purpose, but what I experienced in the session and over the several days after the session was painful and frightening, so she had in effect hurt me. I took all of the anger that I felt towards her and aimed it squarely at myself, because I couldn’t tolerate being angry with her when things already felt so unstable. I was an exceedingly mixed up person who couldn’t fully get out of child states for most of the week between the disaster session and when I saw her next. Even now, there are parts of me that are wary about trusting her, now that I have experienced how badly things can go, without her trying to harm me. She made a mistake. She, herself, said that she had very poor timing and that she messed up how she asked me the question, even though it was something that she did need to clarify with me, because the lack of information was getting in the way of her helping me. However, the one thing that I gained was the certainty that something bad could happen between the two of us and while it might mess me up for awhile, I could eventually pull myself back together. If she fails me again, I can survive it. Unfortunately, the only way for me to really be certain of that was to experience it.

This experience got me thinking about how much I have kept from her, even after all of this time. I understand some of the reasons why I hide things, but I think that they are old reasons and don’t have much to do with today. I had a loving mother, but I believed that I had to keep things from her. There were lots of reasons why I believed that it wasn’t safe to tell her, both because of external threats and because I didn’t think that she could handle knowing; the end result was that I was trained to hide what happened, even from someone who was caring. I have heard other people say that if you don’t feel like you can tell your therapist anything, then there is something wrong with the relationship with the therapist (with the implication that the therapist needs to do more to enable your feeling able to share), but with Mama Bear, she has done everything possible to create a safe place to share. The problem is that I have to fight against very early survival training and then decades of following the same rules.

So I am trying to push myself to hide less. I need to act judiciously, so I don’t overwhelm myself, but I think that the very act of hiding/ not being able to speak about what happened gives it more power than it otherwise would have. I need to take that power for myself, so I can free the parts of me that still feel bound to the abuse memories.

Yesterday, I told her about a part that I have come to understand and be able to work with since the beginning of the year, but I had been afraid to tell her about because I was afraid that she would tell me that I was doing something wrong or that this part couldn’t exist the way that I was experiencing it. I had not felt confident enough in myself and my ability to support this part to say, “This is what is going on. Period. If your theories don’t work with it, then too bad.” But I pushed past that fear yesterday and discovered that 1) it was vitally important for me to openly bring this part into a session and work with it, 2) Mama Bear is interested in my experience first and then uses the theories to help inform how she organizes treatment (I knew this, but needed to be reminded of it), and 3) the way that I experience this part actually fits well with the theory after all.

Huh, I pushed past the fear that has bound me up to now, I shared with Mama Bear, and not only did nothing bad come of it, but good came out of it. Maybe I don’t have to hide as much as I have in the past. I’m starting to feel as though maybe I have the freedom to move a bit and not worry so much about making a single false step. I think that it’s safe enough to take some chances. I’m strong enough to deal with things going wrong, even if I may react badly at first. No one here is judging me. There is no “test” to make sure that I get things just right. Once again, I remember that it’s safe to be “me”, as I slowly discover who all of me is.

(Disclaimer: I mostly wrote this and the preceeding post to to have a record for myself of what the process was like, but I decided to post it, in case someone happened to look for information on drawing a system map or the struggles of revealing your parts. Anyways, it is written less with an eye towards presentation and more to satisfy my personal needs and may not be of much interest.)

In Drawing a System Map, I wrote about my process of drawing the map and deciding to show the map to Mama Bear.

This morning, I panicked. I started to imagine how Mama Bear might respond, I felt sick to my stomach at the idea of exposing myself so much, I really wanted to cancel the appointment all together (which I simply do not do), and in general I felt like a frightened child. But I managed to talk myself into bringing the map into the office, so I would have the option of showing it, if I decided that I wanted to, even though I expected not to, at that point.

I was about a minute late and Mama Bear was already seated, so she got a good look at me as I settled.

“You are looking…” she paused, “agitated. Is it because of what you brought in?”

I took a deep breath, nodded, and said, “I both want to show you and am frightened to.”

“What are you afraid would happen if you show me?”

“I figured that out right before I came here. I am afraid that if I really reveal myself to you, you will say, ‘That’s too much.’ And then you would push me out the door.”

“You know where that comes from, don’t you?”

“Yes.”

“And it makes sense when you are so afraid of how your own mother will respond. After all, who am I? Yes, I say that I care very much about you, yes, I keep on showing up and acting in ways that are caring, but if you can’t trust your mother, how do you know that you can trust me?”

I just sat there and stared at her. I couldn’t believe that she had just voiced my fears and I didn’t know how to react.

“How are you responding to what I just said?”

And then there is a big blank that I wasn’t even aware was there until I started to write this out. The next thing that I remember is being partially curled up on the arm of the love seat, like I often am, but my position was different. Rather than being curled up into the back of the love seat, hiding, I was doubled over, because I felt the need to protect myself, but my body was perched on the edge, as if I was reaching out towards Mama Bear. I have no idea what I said, but I know that my body was trying to communicate, “I want to be connected.” I was stressed, I was self protective, but my response was not, ‘go away, I don’t trust you’, instead it was, ‘I need you. I need to connect. I want to be close to you.’

I then found it possible to start to talk about what the process of drawing the map had been like for me and some of what I had learned from it. I shared with her how surprised I had been that the process had been so helpful to me and we talked about my being better able to tolerate seeing myself.

After over 40 minutes of processing what it meant to me to reveal myself, my fears of what might happen if I did, and what my hopes are for showing her more of myself, I finally felt ready to show her the system map. In fact, I could feel that some of me felt excited and eager to show it to her. I sat there and hesitated, because I knew that showing it that late in the session was a significant risk, if it turned out to be triggering. On the other hand, I was at a fragile point and if I didn’t show her the map in that session, it might be several weeks or even a couple of months before I felt able to bring it back. (To clarify, Mama Bear is one of the few therapists who does full 60 minute sessions, minus a couple of minute bathroom break. What I didn’t know at the time, but was I grateful to discover was that there was no client after me today.)

So I looked her and said, “I know the time, but I want to show you want I drew and I’m afraid that I won’t bring it back for awhile, if I don’t do it now. I know that we can’t really go into it, but can I just show it to you.”

“Of course you can. Do you want for me to move over there, or do you want to come over here?”

I pulled a chair over to her chair, in hopes that it would help prevent me from going into one of the parts. I sat down with the drawing pad on my lap, looked at her and said, “It really is safe to show this to you, right? Nothing bad is going to happen.”

“Yes, it is safe. I am not going to reject you. You know, I may actually recognize a lot of what I see there, since I have been observing you for some time.”

I smiled at her and said, “I wouldn’t be at all surprised if you did!”

“C., I am interested in what you have drawn and I want to see it, but I do not have to see it now, if it is not the right time for you to show it. It is up to you. Do you understand? I want to see it, but the timing is completely up to you.”

I looked at her, taking that in and nodded. Then I repeated to myself, “It is safe to show this,” took a deep breath and started to open the pad. But when I caught a glimpse of what I had drawn, I closed it again, took another deep breath, focused inward and reminded myself that I was in a safe place and I could be brave and share myself and fully opened the pad.

Mama Bear was clearly interested in and thinking about what she saw, but the only comment that she made at first was, “There are a lot of parts here.” I had already talked about how it wasn’t complete and I know about other parts that aren’t on the map. I think that she had been a bit surprised by the number (13 or 14, including the central me); I know that I had been a bit dismayed to actually see that many shapes drawn out, but I also know that I experience each of these parts differently, so what is, is.

She asked me a couple of questions and I started to tell her about some of the shapes, what parts they corresponded to, what the forms of the shapes meant, and how one of the smallest shapes that is snuggled up against the central me probably is a shape that is larger than that size would account for, but I think that most her is hiding behind the shape that represents “me.” I felt comfortable talking about the map with her! I wasn’t triggered into a part and I didn’t feel threatened in any way.

I could have gone on talking for some time, but we were nearing the end of the session, so she asked me a couple of questions. First she asked, “How are you experiencing me as we talk about and look at this?” I thought about it a bit and said, “You feel calm, but interested to me.” “That’s a pretty accurate description of how I feel.” Then the question that she asks at the end of every session, “What was it like for you to share this with me, today?” I felt inward for a response, “I feel a bit nervous about it, but over all I feel good.”

“Do you have that good feeling in your body?” I nodded my head. “Can you describe to me were you feel it and how it feels?”

“It’s over my whole front of my torso and it feels like a warmth/energy of hope and freedom.”

“Warmth, hope, and freedom. That’s wonderful.” She paused for a moment, then said, “Is there anything else that you want to say or do as we near the end of the session?”

I looked at her and reached out my hands and she took my hands in hers and we just sat there, looking at each other, being with each other for a minute or two, until I felt obligated to get up and move to my seat. She put my tea together, handed it to me, and sat down across from me. “So much for not doing the most intense work in the last 10 minutes of the session, huh?”

I smiled at her. “That’s one of the good things about being experienced; you develop a sense of when you can break the rules.”

“When you said that you were willing to show me what you drew, there was no way that I was sending you out of here without letting you show it. It was too important

She took a deep breath, as if savoring the moment. “This feels precious to me. I don’t really want to end it, but… Is there something that we need to do, or do we just need to take a breath, give each other a hug, and say, ‘See you next week’?”

I ruefully looked at her, “I think that is what we need to do.”

So we hugged and I walked out the door by myself, but not feeling alone in the slightest. I had allowed more of me to be seen and understood than ever before and that sharing had been welcomed and cherished. It felt as though the door to a prison that I had lived in my whole life had been cast open and now it was up to me to figure out what to do with that freedom.

“Remember that there is nothing that you can tell me about the past that will change how I see you.”

Those are powerful words.

Nothing? Really? Yes, really, she tells me.

Mama Bear is out of town for a week to attend her son’s graduation from college and help him move. Today was my normal therapy day, though, and my mind wasn’t going to stay quiet, so it did some very intense thinking about some very difficult topics. One of which was something that was very, very difficult indeed. For weeks my mind has been stepping around admitting to itself something about how I experienced things with my father that I can cognitively understand is not my fault, but in all other ways feels devastating to me. As I sat there, struggling with it, I realized that this is something that I am going to have to talk with Mama Bear about, because it will keep on haunting me until I do so. This aspect of my experience intersects with so many of the problems that I am having that I simply cannot keep on ignoring it.

So, I sent an e-mail to Mama Bear, starting with: “I keep on running from this in my mind and it isn’t leaving me alone, so I’m going to try sending it to you. I so don’t want to admit to this. I can’t say how much I don’t want to admit to it, but as much as I hate it, I’m going to have to talk about it, sooner or later. At least I will have stated that this is behind some of what I keep on experiencing.” And then I told her.

I know that she isn’t accessing her e-mail frequently while she is gone and in the subject headline I stated that it wasn’t urgent and she should wait to read the e-mail until she got home. I didn’t want to interrupt her break with something so heavy duty, but I knew that if I waited to send it until Monday, I would chicken out and not send the e-mail. It might take months for me to work around to finally talking about this and I think that I will do better if I talk about it in the next week or two.

However, I also realized that the younger parts of me felt vulnerable and needed just a bit of assurance that Mama Bear is still there. Before she left, we had talked and she told me to text her if I needed just a bit of contact and she would get back to me when she was able to. I could tell that at the moment I was only feeling uncomfortable, but without reassurance, it could easily turn into outright distress. I spent too much of the last week bouncing from one part to another and Mama Bear had made it very clear to me that she wanted for me to contact her, rather than risk going back to that place. So I sent her a text, “Hi. Sorry to interrupt, but reaching out for a hand hold.”

A bit later she responded saying, “Hello, C. At lunch with the graduate. Will give a ring a bit later. I am very much here. You are a capable, kind adult!” Just that response was immensely reassuring to me and I told her that she didn’t need to call me. However, she still did so when she was alone, walking from point A to point B. My heart was touched by the kindness of her making that call and spending 20 minutes talking to me when I wasn’t in an extreme crisis but I did find just talking to her to be grounding and reassuring.

Her giving me that time and attention out of her free choice meant a great deal to me. I could feel my heart softening and opening a bit more to be able to trust her just a bit more than I have been able to.

So when I received the e-mail that stated, “there is nothing that you can tell me about the past that will change how I see you,” the response from the part of me that admitted such a shameful thing to her was one of hope. “Nothing? Really?” In the past that would have meant, “I don’t believe you! It isn’t possible!” Today it meant, “I want to believe you. I need to believe you. Tell me again and I will believe you, because I know that I can trust you and you won’t hurt and lie to me.”

Mama Bear has consistently been kind and caring to me. Dare I say it? Really, she has been loving. It hasn’t always been pleasant for me- she has told me things that she believed I needed to hear, but she knew would be upsetting to me- however she did it as gently as possible and it was a loving act. Her willingness to be loving and real with me when it was uncomfortable showed me that her love was real, not pretense to be cast aside when it was no longer easy.

All of this time and energy on her part to provide a figure who was worthy of earning my trust and just as much time and energy on my part to push past my fears over and over until I could finally reach the point where I can say, “Nothing? Really?”, feel as though a blanket of safety has been pulled around me, and want to cry in relief.

Do I have your attention? No, of course the title isn’t what it suggests. 😉

I have been experiencing something a bit odd lately. There are times when I feel pregnant. Not really, truly pregnant, with all of the physical realities (thank goodness for no morning sickness), but I feel as if I am protecting new life that is growing within me.

This isn’t the first time that I have had this experience. I can remember at least two other occasions. One was many years ago, when I realized that the process that I was going through was every bit as painful as giving birth. In fact, I was giving birth to a new me. My childhood abuse and neglect had affected me so profoundly, that in order to proceed towards the type of life that I wanted to have, I couldn’t just tinker around the edges of who I was. I had to get in and over a period of years slowly make the fundamental changes that eventually coalesced into a transformation. I was recognizable from the outside as me, but the way that I experienced myself and the world around me was totally different. At the same time, it wasn’t as though I developed something completely foreign to who I fundamentally had been before. My values and priorities were the same. I still was me, but as Mama Bear said, it was like I was more me. I had developed a me that was closer to who I might have been, if I had grown up in a healthy family.

The thing is that this isn’t a one time process. A person can only take so much personality change at one time. After I had this happen for the first time, I then needed to go off and live life for awhile. I needed to experience and live with the new self that I had developed. I had a natural breaking point around that time, when we left town so that my husband could attend seminary. I stopped therapy, other than during a brief period when I was going through a difficult pregnancy and I was a new mother. Who I was continued to grow and develop- being a parent challenged me to learn to stretch beyond myself in ways that were often painful, frequently joyful, and amazingly healing.

So, over a period of years, life pushed me to grow, and when I found my way back to working with Mama Bear again, I was ready for another transformation, even though I had no idea of what was about to happen at that time. Over the years I had developed enough strength and stability to begin to fully deal with my internal world, even though I had it almost completely walled off until I walked back into Mama Bear’s office. I remember walking (slowly) through the woods a few months into therapy, after my sessions with Mama Bear, feeling like a woman who was 8 months pregnant. I knew that there was a new me that needed to emerge, but I also knew that I was frightened of it and I fought it. While a small part of me welcomed this emergence, most of me didn’t want anything to do with it, because this was not a me that I felt comfortable with. This new me encompassed an increased awareness of my parts and a grudging acceptance that I needed to work with all of me. In many ways it really was like I gave birth to many of my parts that had been buried inside- I finally allowed them to start to emerge into the light of day.

And today, what is the experience like for me today? Emotionally, this is the closest to the hopeful but nervous anticipation that I actually experienced while I was pregnant with my daughter. I can feel myself being pulled apart, rearranged and put back together again, which is a disorienting, but not always painful process. Over the last couple of weeks, I have expected for myself to have certain reactions and was surprised when I had other, healthier reactions. There is real change going on inside in regards to how I relate to others. I find myself very protective of these fragile changes, the same way that I had the instinct to protect my daughter when she was growing inside of me. After all, this new me represents hope and my future. She is learning to be fully real with others, even when there are difficult feelings. She is learning how to turn to others to ask for comfort and then actually accept the comfort. She is learning that it isn’t only OK to need others, it is good to need others. She is learning how much she likes and wants to be in relationship with others. She is impacting my life already, but she isn’t yet fully formed or sturdy enough to take the knocks and bruises of daily life. This me needs some more time to develop, strengthen and grow, before I can “give birth” to her and have her settle into the greater me. I have to say that I like this new me; I like the way that I feel when I am connected to her and I love being able to finally, really connect with another, when I most need to connect.

I had a profound experience today and parts of me inside are still taking it in.

I’m not sure whether I mentioned it, but I had a very nasty fall almost two weeks ago and I have been in pain ever since. As you can tell from my most recent post, things have been challenging for me emotionally, as well. As a result, my back and shoulders became even more of a mass of tension and discomfort than is normal for me. When it got to the point where not only my hip was interfering with my ability to sleep, but my back was as well, I knew that I needed to take action to get some relief.

I am taking a break from the massage therapist that I have worked with since I was pregnant with my daughter. (That makes it sound like I get massages all the time, when 2 or 3 a year is good for me, but the point is that we have a long term, previously very trusting relationship.) My dad inserted himself into the relationship and bought a package of 6 massages for my birthday last summer. My massages with her have turned into an exercise in not getting triggered, unfortunately. She did nothing wrong at all; the problem simply is that my dad is now associated with massage and her. I hope to eventually fix that, but I’m not there yet.

Anyways, that meant that I wasn’t able to turn to her for help. Our local food coop has a massage station set up at certain hours, where you pay a dollar a minute and pay for however many minutes of chair massage you want (or can afford.) Mama Bear had talked about the massage therapist who runs the program in glowing terms, and according to the on line schedule he was on duty this afternoon, so I decided to go and see if he could help me.

Well, not only is J. a gifted massage therapist and he helped me to get considerable relief from the physical pain that I have been experiencing, but the experience was important for me on another level.

One of the things that I have learned about massage is that it is most helpful for me if I try to receive it in as mindful of a state of mind as possible. About 1/2 way through the massage, I became aware of the fact that I was not only experiencing the massage on a physical level, but it also was affecting me deeply inside. This stranger whom I had only met 15 minutes before was treating me with kindness and with a real desire to help me feel better. I hadn’t considered before how much can be communicated through touch. Most of the massages that I have had with people other than the woman I normally work with (A.) have been more or less helpful and the therapists have ranged from friendly and clearly desiring to help to business like. Never before have I experienced such an intense experience of presence. Even with A., she is there and I can feel the caring and nurturing coming off of her, but it is quieter.

Fortunately, I wasn’t in a thinking state, just an experiencing state, otherwise I probably would have started to doubt what I was experiencing. Instead, I realized just how much my soul needed to experience that kindness. While accepting the physical impact of being abused has been an important part of my recent healing, it also left me in a state where I was parched for physical kindness. So being able to sit there, in a light trance state, soaking in the physical kindness and care that was being given was tremendously healing for me. Parts of me inside were able to absorb the experience of having someone use touch in a healing way. Use touch in a healing way– the thought makes me cry in grief at what was and hope at what can be.

And this was a stranger. As I absorbed the sense of kindness coming off of this young man, there was a sense of wonder inside that there really are people out there who treat other people well. There are men out there who act out of a desire to help others. Not just the few men that I know and have tested out over time, but men that I have never met. There really are men out there who don’t secretly want to hurt others. The world really is a less dangerous place than my insides believe it to be. It’s like the difference between the world being a war zone and the world having some safety in it.

Right now my insides feel the way that they do sometimes after a breakthrough with Mama Bear. There is a sense of wonder and hope that things actually might be better than I thought they were- almost a giddiness.

My session on Wednesday was a difficult one. I’m still not entirely sure why it was so difficult, but I ended up terribly dissociated. We had been talking about something that should have been fairly innocuous- doing a particular meditation and how I respond to it- when the slight dissociation that I had been feeling rapidly started to pull me into something deeper. I stopped, looked at Mama Bear and told her, “I need help.” “You need help staying here?” “Yes.” So she worked with me while I grounded and reoriented to the here and now and started to feel stable again. But then she went back to what she had been asking about, because she was concerned from what I had previously told her that the meditation that I was doing might be harmful to me. She needed more information to figure out whether she should advise me to hold off on that meditation for now or not. Unfortunately, the questioning triggered a set of reactions that I have in response to the fear that I was doing something wrong, despite my trying to do the right thing. I become afraid, have a freeze response, and dissociate. Usually I have some sense of what has triggered that strong of a reaction, but for whatever reason, I just didn’t this time. I am not sure what else happened during the session, but I do know that it didn’t seem to address anything that I needed to talk about.

After the session, I started to realize that I was angry with Mama Bear. Really angry. Unfortunately, this was going to cause problems because I am afraid to deal with anger. I’m not talking about it making me nervous, but rather it makes me start to shake and keep on shaking. I had some idea of what I was angry with Mama Bear about (I had told her in an e-mail about some issues that were overwhelming me emotionally and I told her that I needed help dealing with them, but we didn’t), but as I thought about how I was feeling, I realized that the intensity of the anger far exceeded the magnitude of the offence. I knew that I if I didn’t address the anger first thing in my Friday session, then nothing productive would be done. I also knew that if I tried to bring it up out of the blue, it would make things 10 times as hard on me, so I wrote an e-mail to Mama Bear, telling her what was up. Her response was reassuring: “Of course, it is important to tell me how you are feeling, whatever it is. We need to keep addressing all feelings. This has nothing to do with your being bad, which is a carry over from your past, but rather a statement of what we need to do together. If you are able, we can discuss this more on Friday, so that you can feel less alone when you leave.”

After our greetings at the next session, Mama Bear broached the subject: “I’m really glad that you felt able to tell me that you are angry with me.”

I rolled my eyes and snorted.

“No, really. Do you realize how much this shows that your trust in me has grown for you to be able to so quickly admit first to yourself and then to me that you were angry? It’s a big change.”

I realized that she was correct. Even a few months ago I couldn’t have done it. I also realized that while it was very uncomfortable for me to write that e-mail to her and I was squirming while sitting there, I wasn’t feeling overwhelming levels of fear. Somewhere along the way, I had learned how to trust more deeply. I had developed confidence that she wasn’t likely to suddenly turn into someone who would treat me horribly. I could trust her to remain her. I couldn’t predict exactly what she would do and parts of me were still afraid that somehow my anger would be used against me, but enough of me was solid in my trust that she would respond with respect and kindness that I could bring my anger out into the open.

I still struggled to talk about what I had been angry about, but I was aware that I was dealing with fears rather than really feeling afraid that she would react with the intent to shame or judge me. I knew that I could trust her to not put me down or ridicule me, even if in the intensity of the moment I couldn’t fully feel confident that I was emotionally safe. The trust was strong enough for me to push past the barriers and finally express, “I am angry because I got so dissociative last time. I know that it doesn’t make sense for me to blame you, but I am still angry.”

“Ah… It’s OK, it doesn’t have to make sense… I remember that you did ask me for help when you really started to dissociate.” At that point she stopped because I started to experience some strong emotions. I had asked for help and I didn’t really get as much help as I needed that time.

Suddenly I realized why I was so angry; I really was furious with my mother for not giving me the help that I needed when I was a child. And with that, I was off on a very intense and very important piece of work in regards to my mom. I have been struggling over experiencing and expressing my anger at my mom for the past while, but feeling safe enough to look at why I was angry at Mama Bear was what finally allowed me to link into just how profoundly I feel that my mother failed at her job of protecting me.

Developing deeper trust with Mama Bear has been a funny thing, because it really wasn’t about her- her part in it was to be consistent and keep on being herself. It certainly wasn’t about her demonstrating that she is trustworthy- she did that many years ago. It’s all about me. It’s about my ability to develop a confidence in myself and how I perceive the world. The old thought was: “I believe that she is trustworthy, but what if I am being stupid and missing something obvious?” It’s about my being sure that I am enough in charge of my life that all of the rules aren’t going to change underneath me all of a sudden and make people treat me differently. It’s about being sure that I’m not “crazy.”